Could use more SSD storage. Some keyboard flex. Insistent fan. Back edge of lid can dig into your legs. Very good, but not great, battery life.

Bottom Line

The Sony VAIO Pro 13 shows that you can make laptops lighter and thinner when you use a fourth-generation Intel Core processor. It's very good, though Sony really needs a grand slam to distance itself from similar rivals.

The Sony VAIO Pro 13 is one of the systems you should look at if you want a full-featured 1080p laptop that weighs just over two pounds. It has carbon fiber, a fourth-generation Intel Core processor, PCIe SSD, and a dozen other buzz-worthy features. All that result in a laptop that will give the road warrior a formidable tool on her travels. It's a good achievement in ultrabook technology, and will serve you well whether you're pitching a VC on the merits of your latest entrepreneurial ideas, a world traveler that must shave every ounce from his travel bag, or if you're a creative director pitching an ad campaign to your firm's SVPs.

Design and Features
The VAIO Pro 13 is certainly a thin system. Measuring about 0.68 by 12.75 by 8.5 (HWD) and weighing in at 2.3 pounds, the Vaio Pro 13 will fit in most travel bags easily, and will fit nicely on an airline tray table. Like its little brother the Sony VAIO Pro 11 ($1,549.99), the VAIO Pro 13 is made using carbon fiber to give the system strength. It compares nicely to other systems that use metal construction like the Acer Aspire S7-391-9886 ($1,650) and the ultraportable Editors' Choice Apple Macbook 13-inch (Mid 2013) ($1,099). Our review unit has a brushed metal look keyboard deck and a black painted top lid.

The VAIO Pro 13 looks like a consumer-oriented rival to the enterprise-class Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch ($1,684), down to both systems using carbon fiber for lightness and strength. The VAIO Pro 13 has a very bright 1,920-by-1,080 resolution (Full 1080p HD) IPS display. The display has several color settings, including the vivid default setting that is similar to the punchy color setting on HDTVs. When you ramp that down to more eyestrain-friendly settings, it doesn't reduce the impact that the screen has on your visuals. The screen remains bright and clear through all its settings, making it an excellent choice if you need to critically view photos and videos.

The ten-point touch screen is responsive, and has a good feel. We did notice that the system's auto-dimming ambient lighting sensor was a bit over responsive before we updated the system's drivers using the built-in VAIO Update app. Once we ran the updates, however, things settled down. Between that and the initially flaky Wi-Fi connection, we'd recommend running updates immediately when you take the system out of the box. After the updates, the system was much more copacetic and less annoying.

The system has only a few I/O ports, but those are welcome. The system has two USB 3.0 ports, a SD card reader, and a full size HDMI port on the right side. On the left are the jack for the AC adapter and a vent for the cooling fan. While Intel has claimed that the fourth-generation Intel Core processors run cooler and more efficiently, the VAIO Pro 13's fan still managed to make itself heard when under duress. When we were running our benchmark tests, the system's cooling fan spooled up and didn't quiet down until the tasks were over and the system was back at idle. This may or may not be a problem for you; it all depends on your tolerance for noise.

The system's screen has a built-in riserthe back edge of the screen lifts the back of the keyboard deck up when you open the laptop up on a flat surface. This works great when you're on a table, but it can also dig into your legs when you lay the laptop on your lap. Make sure you try it out first if you're the type who likes to work without a desk or work surface.

The system's trackpad is multi-touch, so you can navigate around Windows 8 without having to touch the screen too often. The keyboard is responsive, with slightly slick keys and a smidge of keyboard flex. You'd likely not notice the flex unless you really bash the keys, but it still is there. The system comes with a few pre-loaded apps like Sony Music, Solitaire, Sociallife, Music Master Jam, Miesweeper, Taptiles, Vaio Care, Hulu Plus, Vaio Message Center, Intel AppUp, iHeartRadio, Vaio Update, ArtRage Studio, PuzzleTouch, Skype, [photo] Album by Sony, PlayMemories, Vaio Movie Creator, MyDailyClip, Slacker Radio, Kaspery Internet Security, and an ad for Microsoft Office. Those are a lot of apps, but some are more useful than others. For example, Sony Movie Creator and ArtRage Studio can be used by graphic artists and budding video editors to create everything from doodles to exquisite works of art. The system has a one-year warranty.

Performance
The VAIO Pro 13 has very good performance, due to its fourth-generation Intel Core i5-4200U processor and PCIe-based 128GB SSD. While it can be argued that a multimedia oriented user may need more than 128GB to hold video files, no one can deny that the VAIO Pro 13 starts up from both a sleep and a cold boot in seconds. We didn't even have time to blow on our coffee to cool it before the system was up and ready to go.

Consequently, the VAIO Pro 13 has very good day-to-day PCMark7 numbers, as well as multimedia benchmark numbers that are faster than the EC-winning Apple MacBook Air 13-inch. All in all, it's neck and neck with other Windows-based systems like the Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch, Editors' Choice ultrabook Asus Zenbook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T ($1,199) and Dell XPS 13-MLK ($1,399). The VAIO Pro 13 has good, if not exceptional, battery life. It lasts 6 hours 23 minutes on our battery rundown test, a few minutes short of the Asus UX31A-BH15T, but hours longer than the Dell XPS 13-MLK and Lenovo X1 Carbon Touch. Unfortunately, all takers have half the life of the 15-and-ahalf-hours of rundown score of the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch.

The Sony VAIO Pro 13 runs neck and neck with some other very good to excellent ultrabooks, and that's the problem. It needed to be much, much better than rivals to pull ahead of the pack. The anticipation of fourth-generation Intel Core promised that we'd get much longer battery life without any drawbacks. Sony did make an ultrabook that is as light as one of the larger tablets, that's true. However, by working to reduce weight with esoteric materials and leaving some of the battery cells behind, it doesn't last much longer than cheaper ultrabooks with last year's third-generation (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core processors. Though heavier, the high-end ultrabook EC remains the Asus ZenBook Prime Touch UX31A-BHI5T, because it is cheaper and has just about the same levels of performance and feature set as the VAIO Pro 13.

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Joel Santo Domingo is the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs. He joined PC Magazine in 2000, after 7 years of IT work for companies large and small. His background includes managing mobile, desktop and network infrastructure on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Joel is proof that you can escape the retail grind: he wore a yellow polo shirt early in his tech career. Along the way Joel earned a BA in English Literature and an MBA in Information Technology...
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